


A Million Miles But I Will Find You

by Lire_Casander



Category: Intelligence (US TV 2014)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:11:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1465552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody goes home. That's Delta Force, and he's a Delta, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Million Miles But I Will Find You

**Author's Note:**

> * Title taken from Goo Goo Doll's song _Home_ from their album _Something For The Rest Of Us_.
> 
> * Unbeta'ed. English isn't my mother tongue, so please be kind and let me know if I've messed up royally. Also, if there are any mistakes please point them out to me and I will correct them.
> 
> * New to the fandom, which has just hit Spain. Also, first fic in what feels like a bazillion years but it's more or less six months, so it may be a little bit rusty. Bear with me.
> 
> * Set in chapter 5 titled _The Rescue_.

He's watching the scene unfold through the telescopic sight, just as if he's an outsider witnessing someone else's life, the spectator of a freak show. He watches on as they grip the girl more forcefully, as she cries out in pain, and all he can think about is that he wants Riley out of there as soon as possible. He needs her out like, yesterday. There is no worry for the girl, there is nothing else right now in his super mind but the screams that hurry Riley to get in the fucking car _right now_.

Which of course isn't what she ends up doing, anyway. Lillian is yelling in his ear, commanding her to leave the place, to flee so they can think of another way, but Riley couldn't take the easy command and follow through. He doesn't know why he's surprised.

After all, it's what he does all the time.

Somehow, seeing Riley give up the gun, lift her hands up in the air, just after her broken _I can't leave her_ , ignoring his pleas – he's not ashamed to admit that by the end he was actually begging her to get back in the car so she could live to find another way to rescue the girl – seeing her grabbed and pulled and tossed, it hurts him almost as much as it did when he saw Amelia for the first time after looking for her for years on end.

He finds out that powerlessly watching as Riley is taken into the car and away brings a pain to his heart that he didn't think he would feel ever again.

Lillian is still yelling into his ear _what's going on, Gabriel?_ and _tell me she's backing away_ , so he thinks he should reply, be the eyes he's supposed to be for the team back in Angel's Bluff.

"Dammit," is all he can manage, tossing his weapon away. It's all Lillian needs to exhale audibly and begin firing orders like it's the end of the world.

He feels it's the end of his world, anyway.

A part of his brain keeps track of what Lillian is saying, for he finds himself picking up the sniper rifle and walking to the car that now waits for him in the middle of nowhere, Mexico, silently mocking his inability to keep Riley safe.

He doesn't realize he's said it aloud until he hears Lillian saying "Technically it's _her_ job to keep you safe," and he grips the wheel tighter as he climbs up inside the dark vehicle, his knuckles white with strength and stress and what he can only label as fear.

For all his new mind is worth, there isn't a single application of his new chip to help him ease the feeling that he's losing Riley, and he can't afford to lose her too. Not so shortly after Amelia, not after finding out Riley is almost his perfect match for their job.

He doesn't dare to voice the feeling laying underneath, not even in his mind. Instead, he drives away from the place where he's seen Riley at her truest form.

In between Lillian's voice giving him orders to drive through the town and into an open space, and Doc's stern _are you alright, Gabe?_ , he hears Jameson muttering into his ear, below the rest of the voices but still audible, "She'll be alright, she has to be, but you have to make sure she is, you have to rescue her and the girl," and the mantra follows him through the desert streets until dawn breaks.

The night gives way to the day in an explosion of colors that he can't appreciate in all their glory, for he is too engrossed in his own thoughts to pay attention to anything that isn't his own safety and Riley.

It doesn't surprise him at all that his mind wanders time and again to all the times Riley has touched him in one way or another – a punch to let him know that she's joking, a shove to save his life, a light caress to show him she cares – and he asks himself whether it is healthy, this dependence he finds himself trapped into. He knows the answer anyway.

Lillian and Doc are both talking into his ear, trying to keep him awake with all the data they have Nelson retrieving from all the sources, including some video cameras they shouldn't really have access to. A video has been sent, of Riley and the girl tied up in a place almost impossible to trace, even if they have the whole team working on it. Jameson has fallen silent in the end, probably taken aback by the crudity of a video that's been played over and over in his modified mind, and all he can make out from that absence of words is the clickity click of the keyboard. He doesn't need anyone to help him not fall asleep. He's a Delta Force, even if he left the army long ago, he won't sleep while alone, nor will he blink while one of his men – his partner, this time – is suffering God knows how many tortures. Everybody goes home.

Delta at heart, he tells himself.

It has nothing to do with butterflies in his stomach or goofy smiles whenever she is around.

He tells himself off, hands still on the steering wheel inside a car parked askew in another place in the middle of nowhere. Now is not the time to mull over his supposed feelings. He's only just a recent widower. A couple of months have passed by since that moment in the hospital, since Amelia and all the lies, although he feels he's been alone in this marriage for far longer than those approximately eight weeks. He refuses to use his power to get a more accurate estimation. He doesn't need that to know he's all by himself – to understand that it all changed when Riley came around, and that it is all about to change now if he doesn't do something to stop it from ending.

He closes his eyes. Doc told him about all the fears and the doubts that would arise while on duty. Lillian made sure he was always protected, just like the precious asset he was. All his other partners had been just that – mere bodyguards who only saw him as a weapon and a machine with the ability to act as a human, sometimes. But Riley had been different even from the beginning.

He thinks he owes her this. He owes her. But it still oddly feels like he's being selfish, wanting to rescue her and then keeping her from the world so she doesn't get hurt again. And that's the danger of falling in love – the risk of losing everything is higher and the temptation of locking everyone up so they don't have to face the ugliness of the world is bigger.

It takes him a moment to realize. The thought sinks slowly but heavily in his chest. He opens his eyes abruptly, no longer paying half a mind to what is being said through his system. It all makes sense, after all.

He _is_ in love.

No big surprise there. He's always been a sentimentalist. It doesn't creep him out, that he's fallen so shortly after Amelia died, but if he's being honest – and he has to, there's so much at stake when someone is held captive that a simple omission of some truth can be decisive – if he's being honest, he had fallen out of love way before he found Amelia. It was mainly stubbornness and borderline obsession.

So there he is, knuckles already white – have they even been another color since he took that sniper rifle and waited on the roof, so far away from Riley it hurt – and scanning his whereabouts without really seeing anything, just thinking. 

He isn't sure about anything that might come out of this. He doesn't know if he will survive her rejection, were he to confess his feelings. Which he isn't. Or maybe he is. But perhaps he should start at the beginning, and afterwards there will be time for pancakes and bacon for breakfast – a rightful date. If she says yes.

At least he's going to fight tooth and nail to give her the chance to hear him asking, to ponder whether it would be good or bad for her career – after all she already has an official reprimand on her personal file – to decide if he's worth her time out of duty.

He's going to rescue her, alive and hopefully unscathed. And if he can't, whatever the reason, he's going to make sure the people who took her remember who Gabriel Vaughn is while he's sending them to hell.

He lets go of the steering wheel and exhales a breath he hasn't known he's been holding before speaking into the air.

"I have enough on that video to cyber render."


End file.
